Introduction

By 2015, the harsh economic austerity measures enforced upon Greece by the ‘Troika’ – made up of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) – in return for bailout loans designed to keep the country afloat had resulted in widespread impoverishment for the Greek people. Between 2009-14 severe material deprivation in Greece rose from 11% to 21.5% of the population, and the poorest 10% of the population lost 56.5% of their income (Truth Committee on the Public Debt [TCPD], 2015: 40). The disastrous social consequences of austerity fomented an all-out confrontation between Greece and its creditors.

The Greek general election in January 2015 brought the radical, anti-austerity party, Syriza, to power in the Hellenic parliament. In power, Syriza attempted to reverse the austerity measures at home, while also trying to renegotiate the terms of the debt with the Troika. What followed was a frenetic and combative period of negotiation between the Troika and the Syriza government, represented by Greek prime minister, Alex Tsipras, and his heterodox finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis. Syriza framed their arguments in terms of their own democratic legitimacy, culminating in the famous 5 July referendum, in which Greek citizens overwhelmingly voted ‘όχι’ (no) to the renegotiated bailout package set out by its lenders. They also attempted to use legal arguments to question the legitimacy of the debt. In short, Syriza's first eight months were defined by a political movement of Hellenic defiance that threatened to overturn the Troika's imposition of austerity. As we now know, however, the radicalism of the first Syriza government ended in failure, capitulation and a more ‘moderate’ approach in its second parliamentary term.

One of the initiatives of the first, more radical, Syriza government was the development of the Truth Committee on the Public Debt (TCPD), which was established in April 2015 and tasked with investigating Greece's sovereign debt. The TCPD was intended to support the Greek government in its negotiations with its creditors and pursued its investigations to formulate arguments concerning the cancellation of Greek debt. In June 2015, it published a preliminary report in English and Greek that challenged both the dominant narratives regarding the key causes of Greece's spiralling sovereign debt and the legality of specific debts according to international law.